You've applied your passions and talents, so how can you be sure the product you'll create will appeal to others? Conducting market research is a great way to understand consumers' needs and wants. So, what is market research and how do you do it?
Market research is the gathering and interpretation of information about people or organizations to help gain insight to support decision making—aka surveys. Start by asking yourself who you're interested in serving, who you understand and who you have access to. Who would be the best "who" to your "what"? The "Who" being your consumers, the "What" being the product you want to create. Once you've answered those questions and established your audience, you can conduct a survey.
One way to do this is by conducting short questionnaires through SurveyMonkey or on Facebook. You can even spice it up a bit and ask questions through Twitter polls. Ask consumers what they need and what they want your "what" to provide for them.
Analyze the results. What are consumers saying they want? Do they like your idea? Why or why not? How can you improve your ideas based on these results? Try to understand your consumers on a personal level
Once you've analyzed the results, work on making your product better. Tweak and adjust the things your consumers didn't like. Define your competitive set. Deciding who your competitive set is is crucial in decisions you make about your business.
For example, SOCIAL Enjoyments could set its competitive set as any of the following:
- Other organic sparkling wines.
- All sparkling wine.
- Any healthy cocktail options.
- All alcoholic beverages people drink during the day.
Basically take a look at how competitors influence what products you'll develop, which consumers you'll target, where you'll sell your product and how you'll promote your product.
Once you've decided that, you'll be good to go! As always, feel free to comment with any questions below. I’m more than happy to help in any way that I can!